Geelong to act early in troubling times for the AFL

By Jake Niall

5 February 2010 — 12:00am

AT GEELONG, Mathew Stokes is in trouble. Within St Kilda, Andrew Lovett is seen as trouble, while the third AFL player facing career-threatening criminal charges, Richmond teenager Troy Taylor, is perhaps viewed as troubled.

That last ''d'' makes a hell of a difference to a kid facing the football gallows. A club owes a duty of care to a player who is ''troubled'' - as Lovett, who suffered from depression, was once regarded - but if he is merely big Trouble than he will be cut little slack. Ben Cousins covered both categories, hence the agonising of clubs about whether he deserved that second chance.

This off-season has been an unpleasant one for the AFL hierarchy, which must be weary of expressing its ''disappointment'' that a player has been ''implicated in a charge of this nature'' - the well-worn words football operations manager Adrian Anderson trotted out on Wednesday when the Stokes-coke story detonated.

Drug trafficking, sexual assault and an assault by a kid on probation (Taylor) aren't a good look for an organisation that has worked so diligently to make its players good corporate citizens, having launched ambitious programs aimed at preventing drug and alcohol abuse and encouraging respectful treatment of women. This off-season of strife began with Essendon's emerging star Michael Hurley's alleged assault of a cab driver and included the Carlton booze cruise, which seems like a tea party in comparison with what has transpired since.

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Social responsibility has been a cornerstone of the Andrew Demetriou regime, almost as much as northern expansion. The AFL, thus, will be hovering over Geelong, St Kilda and Richmond, like George Orwell's Big Brother, watching and ready to step in if they don't see ''appropriate'' action. The fate of Richmond's Taylor, who is 18 and yet to play, will be largely determined by the Northern Territory's courts, the kid having served a short stretch in juvenile detention for robbery and assault offences before he was drafted.

Geelong is well aware that the AFL reserves the right to intervene if it sees a soft penalty handed out to Stokes, regardless of what happens in court. The Cats, thus, will take pre-emptive action - getting in before the league and the law.

Geelong is soon likely to announce that Stokes, who is facing a drug-trafficking charge, will be suspended from the early rounds of the 2010 season, the club following the template established in the Steve Johnson suspension of 2007 - a defining decision in the transformation of the playing group into a super-team.

Perhaps the Stokes sanction will be a catalyst for another Geelong assault on the flag. Parallels with the Johnson situation have already been made, given that Cameron Ling has just taken over the captaincy and faces his first major test, just as Tom Harley cut his teeth on the Stevie J drama.

But what is clear about the Cats is that they are supporting Stokes as much as they can, given the gravity of the word ''trafficking'', albeit one gram of cocaine hardly puts him in the company of the late Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Stokes is a popular player, who effectively ruled himself out of contention for a berth in the 2009 grand final team. He has credits in the bank, and so long as more dirt does not emerge from the drug connections, the Cats want him back in the forward line.

Geelong's willingness to give Stokes the benefit of the doubt is almost the reverse of St Kilda's tough stance on Lovett, whose suspension is truly ''indefinite''. St Kilda has not concealed its feelings of betrayal by Lovett, who brought his Essendon baggage in tow, and blotted his copy with a drunken arrest before the alleged sexual misdeed. That mistrust is now mutual, with Lovett taking action against the club, to protect his position.

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The Lovett scenario exposes the difficulties clubs and players face in navigating both their own team-first cultures and the criminal justice system. Lovett has not been charged, yet St Kilda - mindful of the serious allegation - has already rendered a negative judgement, and one wonders how the parties will reconcile if he is cleared. The St Kilda playing group has not exactly leapt to Lovett's defence either.

In the eyes of the law, the individual's rights are paramount - a man is innocent until proven otherwise. In the disciplined AFL team, the needs of ''we'' will always outweigh the rights of ''me.''